Rock Band finally getting full albums, starting with Judas Priest

Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengance will become the first complete album …

Harmonix has announced that, as promised, full albums will now be available to purchase via the Rock Band store. The first album, which will be released next week (April 22 for Xbox 360 and 24 for PlayStation 3), is Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance. The individual songs will still run gamers $1.99, while the entire album will cost $14.99.

Harmonix has two other albums planned for release over the next two months—The Cars' The Cars in May and The Pixies' Doolittle in June—but Alex Rigopulos, the developer's co-founder, has told MTV News that they are unable to promise a regular release schedule for complete albums, similar to the weekly schedule they have in place for singles.

As for current PS2 and future Wii owners of Rock Band, Rigopulos hinted that they would be able to have access to the albums in some fashion as well. "Suffice it to say that all of this content we're amassing for next-gen consoles, we want to make it available to as broad an audience as possible as we can," he said. So it looks like those versions will be seeing song updates via new retail discs, similar to the PS2 versions of Guitar Hero and Singstar.

The only other confirmed album was The Who's Who's Next, but Rigopulos did hint at future releases from more modern acts such as Fallout Boy and Nirvana.